Search

April 2008

I was at Web2.0Expo last week, and noted a lot of talk about "Signal-to-Noise."

The whole concept of Signal-to-Noise is really becoming stretched beyond utility now. You know how it started: signal was the waveform that carried information, and noise was any other changes to the waveform - the ones that didn't carry information. So if your noise had too high of an amplitude, you couldn't figure out what the signal was. It was like the ability to see in the dark... either you could see the sofa -- maybe even just barely -- or you couldn't because it was too dark.

But now, we have something more like gold prospecting, but for any given river, people are looking for different kinds of rocks. Sure, some are looking for gold - and few would turn it away - but others are looking for zinc and still other want stones of any composition, so long as they're very flat.

So it's more like mining from a slurry with a constant sluice possibly carrying away something you want.

Not really signal to noise, more like "yield." What's my yield on Twitter? On Facebook's "news feed"?

And the other component: does Twitter need my undivided attention to get a good yield?

This depends on, first, how time-dependent the tool is: Twitter doesn't have great search so unless you find a 3rd party tool that works for you, you have to look at it all day.... and, second, how fast the decay rate of the information typically is.

For example if I don't look at it for 6 hours because I'm busy, is that ok, because I wasn't going to meet one friend at Peet's and answer another's time-sensitive question? In that case, the time decay is fast but that's fine given the attention required. However if I am using Twitter to capture information that occurs suddenly but I need to reference for a while... well, then I still need to hover over it all the time if there's no available way to easily search or aggregate responses.

So I am thinking: most web2.0 tools, can they be better described using the metric "Yield-Per-Amount of Attention Spent," rather than "Signal-to-Noise"?

I propose: "yield per glance" and "optimal glance frequency" for passive monitoring; and "yield per interaction" and "optimal interaction frequency" for non-passive monitoring.

NAFTA meets a bunch of corporate financial myopists in New Orleans while everyone's eyes are on Pennsylvania. The point I'll make here is that regulatory oversight is always subject to corruption, whereas robust systems which have a stable equilibrium that takes into account the human factors is much more likely to prevent rapistic environmental practices.

Many will write long essays today, so I just want to leave you with a simple idea:

The other day a close friend was lamenting about how her kids hear of a new Something, and then throw a tantrum if they can't have it. She expressed dismay in particular because they didn't know the thing even existed five minutes before, and now their life wouldn't be complete without it.

I think even as adults, that "just gotta have it!" feeling never quite leaves, we just get far more selective, we understand how much work goes into attaining our heart's desires, and let's face it we've tried most things by the time we're all grown up, so it takes a bit to get us to the point we're going to do whatever we must to get what we want.

But, we still do! Whether it's a new electronic gizmo, or a house, or something else entirely, somehow, some way, we do everything we can to make it happen. We have the will.

Now, it's Earth Day again. What if we had the will to pursue clean water and fresh urban air with the same "gotta have it!" feeling as we do for good education or our prized possession? What if we pursued the creation of economic systems that protected the stability of the physical environment with as much enthusiasm as we do the stability of financial markets?

I replied in her blog, but I want to reiterate it here, because it's such an important issue.

How do you achieve work-in-one-area / work-in-another-area balance? What if you like to think about social networks but also play the bass in a band? What if you are a programmer who also writes comic strips?

The answer is this: the work-centric peer group has no problem at all with work/work balance or work/play balance. There are plenty of successful models for that.

What we have is a taboo in this society: Childrearing, householding, and community work are all intellectually relevant topics, but unfortunately remedies for barfing 3 year olds is not considered as sexy as how to balance the demands of your band with your work.

The underlying conflict, I believe, has to do with a rigid sense of control. I can control my band schedule, my art and cooking classes, my off-grid-mountaineering-travel schedule. If it's too onerous, I can always just walk out, after all. But I can't control my child suddenly having trouble at school. We have a problem in this society not with work/life balance, but with allowing ambiguity and chaos of life to upset our rigid pursuit of whatever we're after.

When we're in our 20's, we're driven by our own interests and the thrill of our freedom. But as we take on long term responsibility for others, we increase in our skills at mediation, motivation, inspiration... but at the expense of always being able to pursue our own schedule.

That's what this is.

It's not work/life balance. It's how to handle responsibilities beyond ourselves as we age; how to enjoy that this makes us stronger and how to mitigate the risks that it can exhaust us.

A few months ago I had a conversation where I was told that we do have microfinance in the US: we have introductory credit cards, wherein anyone can get a few hundred bucks to do with what they will.

I have no doubt this is true: compared to other countries, we do have access to capital in the US. But I know that microfinance works not because 16 year olds (or the marginally employed) have money shoved at them, but because along with the funding comes knowledge and social support. In fact, Yunus was so successful with microfinance because the funds were given to women (who had entire families to take care of) and to no less than five people at a time.

While a raucous China/Tibet protest ensues in the area, I'm going to finish up this post I started a while ago, as evidently, it's National Bra Fit Week.

For those who are unaware, it's not just about bras. Clothing is manufactured on a B and sometimes a C cup... but of course women tend to want the bustline to fit without much extra room, or even to be snug. Each cup size translates to an inch, so a DD requires 3" more fabric circumference than a B. Tailored clothing? Forget it. And of course, I only mention DD, because that's the largest size polite people are supposed to discuss (based on what can be seen in stores, catalogs, etc), but obviously breasts get bigger than that, and the larger the size, the more variance possible in the shape, which makes clothing all the more difficult to design.

I should point out that underneath one's breasts are one's lungs.

I had for quite a while been hoping someone, somewhere would adopt a sizing mechanism for tops based on bust size and sleeve length (like mens' neck and sleeve length), allowing for different types of fit (equivalent to men's "fitted", "average", and "athletic").

Well, after years of their existence(!), I've found the store!! It's so exciting I can barely type! OK, it only really addresses those issues specific to my body type, but let's face it all supermodels and many post-pubescent teens have the "my shoulders and rib cage are too large!" fitting problem for which Victoria Secret has kindly devoted an store full of push-ups and other ways to enhance cleavage. My fully-fed and grown up C-and-under friends can walk into VS or any other store, or even read Vogue (or Cosmo) for leads on which designers cut their clothes in order to help the athletic or "apple-shaped" among us feel voluptuous (without the backache).

But larger-breasted women are forced to either look like they're flaunting it -- sometimes we do, sometimes we really, really don't! -- or wear baggy clothing.

Sarah had been appalled by the lack of choice in her size and was fed
up of being offered enormous matronly contraptions more suitable for
landing parachutes and being told she could not possibly expect to find
gorgeous bras in her size.

Gosh, I just love that! The exchange rate aside, I've contacted Sarah who says she's putting out new dresses in mid-April, so go take a look!